TACOMA — U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Kelley Arnold didn’t buy a whaling defendants’ claim that former Makah Tribal Chairman Ben Johnson Jr. had tacitly ordered the Sept. 8 whale hunt.
Rather, he took it as the third — and last — of three unsuccessful “tacks” that defense attorneys had taken on behalf of their clients.
Jack Fiander and attorney Paula Olson, lawyers for defendants Wayne Johnson, Andy Noel Theron Parker, said in court documents provided to the Peninsula Daily News that Johnson and the Makah Tribal Council had been complicit in the illegal hunt.
It left a whale harpooned and shot multiple times to die in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The first “tack,” Arnold said, was the contention that the Makah had a cultural compunction to whale.
The second was Fiander’s defense that federal charges violated the hunters’ freedom of religion.
As for the third, Arnold said Monday, “I find it difficult to believe” that the tribe was complicit in the rogue hunt, especially because the Makah tribe filed a friend-of-the-court brief against the whalers early in the case.
Arnold called the months-long proceedings “anguishing” for him because of his study of and affinity for Native American culture.
